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By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, March 15 (Reuters) - The Trumpadministration is seeking to sell leases in the Arctic NationalWildlife Refuge as quickly as possible – drawing fire fromopponents of drilling in the sensitive area, who are warningagainst a rushed process.

A top Department of Interior official who traveled to Alaskalast week promised an imminent start to the leasing process,saying he wanted to wrap up environmental studies within a year,more quickly than such documents have been completed in thepast.

The department will “move very, very quickly on thatproject,” David Bernhardt, deputy secretary, said in a speech inAnchorage, one of several stops he made in an Alaska trip thatincluded visits to the North Slope and to Fairbanks.

Bernhardt said in the future he wants environmental impactstatements to be finished in a year, not just for ANWR, callingthe study process as unproductive and “just nuts.”

“These documents that are written today, when they’re 8,000,10,000, 13,000, 20,000 pages with appendices and everything, Ican tell you no one on the planet reads,” he said.

But Anchorage attorney Erik Grafe said environmental studiescan be especially time-consuming in Alaska, because federal lawrequires consultation with Native tribes and public meetings inaffected communities, many of which are remote.

“None of that can be rushed and done adequately,” saidGrafe, of the environmental organization Earthjustice. “Doingthis in a year is an extraordinarily fast timeline for acomplicated process – a rightfully complicated process.”

Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, a staunch drilling supporter,said at an industry conference in Houston last week that "we’rehoping to have a lease sale as early as 2019 on that."

The prospect of a sped-up process for environmental reviewdrew fire from critics, who said it risks the climate andhabitat of wildlife and inadequate input from local communities.

“It’s really insulting,” said Bernadette Demientieff,executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, whichrepresents the Gwich’in Athabascan people of Alaska and Canada.“You can’t open up a place with such little time. What aboutregulations? What about laws?"

Demientieff said the Gwich’in oppose ANWR oil developmentbecause it threatens the caribou herd that is central to theirdiet and culture. “We’re going to fight them every step of theway,” she said.

Grafe represented opponents to the 2008 Chukchi Sea offshorelease sale in which Royal Dutch Shell spent over $2billion to acquire exploration rights.

A pre-lease sale environmental analysis, which took twoyears to complete, was found by federal courts to be too rushed.The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had to produce twoseparate revisions, forcing delays in exploration work.

Shell ultimately abandoned the multibillion-dollar programin 2015 after failing to find commercial quantities of oil.

Grafe said history could be repeated with the ANWR.

“If the Trump administration takes shortcuts, we won’thesitate to go to court,” he said.(Reporting By David GaffenEditing by Susan Thomas)